


Steadier Footing

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Coming of Age, F/M, Family, Gen, High School
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-05-06 04:34:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14634228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: Jughead silently clocks the distance from their new home: five doors down. “Cool. Thanks again for finding Hotdog. Seriously.” He offers her a small smile, and hopes the heat rising in his cheeks is too subtle for her to see beneath the shade of the maple trees lining the sidewalk.“No worries.” Betty smiles back, a bright, toothy smile that he already knows is going to get stuck in the back of his mind like chewing gum on the sole of his shoe. “I’ll see you in class, Jughead.”(Jughead moves to Riverdale during his junior year of high school.)





	1. one

It’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the air is crisp and clear…

And Jughead Jones is completely, utterly screwed.

“Hotdog!” J.B. cups her hands around her mouth, as though to amplify the words. “ _Hotdog!_ ”

“I can’t believe this,” Jughead mutters, pushing past his sister as he strides down the sidewalk. “Literally all you had to do was _not_ let go of the leash.”

Hardly more than a week in their new home in Riverdale, and already they’ve managed to lose their stepdad’s beloved sheepdog. No, correction: _J.B._ has managed to lose their stepdad’s beloved sheepdog, letting the leash slip between her fingers while she stared wide-eyed at the tricked-out treehouse in the backyard of the house four doors down from where they now live.

But Jughead is the one who will take the blame, because he’s the big brother; he’s a month away from his seventeenth birthday, and she’s only eleven. Jughead’s the one who will stand awkwardly in the kitchen while his mother insists he be grounded for life and Carl sighs _Gladys, they’re just kids_ , unrelenting in his quest to be the cool, supportive quasi-dad they never had. Jughead’s the one who will overhear them one night, voices low, whispering, _maybe he should live with his father, after all._

(And maybe he should. His friends are all back in Toledo – Toni, Sweet Pea, Fangs – and he knows any one of them would let him crash on their sofa if his dad’s drinking becomes too much to bear, no questions asked.)

“I’m sorry,” J.B. says, her words quivering the way they always do just before she’s about to cry. Jughead ignores the twinge it produces in his chest, and charges ahead, resisting the urge to turn back and hug his little sister.

“Hotdog! C’mere, boy!”

He strides past two more houses to the end of the block, and pauses as he surveys the intersection. Was a dog more likely to run straight ahead until something blocked his path, or veer off in another direction just for the hell of it?  

Based on absolutely nothing – he’s never had a dog before, or any sort of pet, for that matter – Jughead opts for the straight-line theory. “C’mon, J.B.,” he calls over his shoulder. He’ll be in even deeper shit if he loses track of her, too.

She trails after him down the sidewalk, her wails of _Hotdog, here boy_! coming like a high-pitched echo of his own until, out of nowhere, a third voice joins them.

“Is this your dog?”

Jughead stops, turns, and is struck by what has to be the most wondrous sight he’s ever laid eyes on: a girl in a blue-and-white cheerleading uniform with a leash in her hands, Hotdog panting happily at her side.

“ _Hotdog!”_ J.B. shrieks, flinging herself at the animal in question. She ignores the girl completely as she throws her arms around the dog, whose tail is wagging in delight. “Oh my god! You bad boy, you scared us!”

Jughead jogs the last few feet towards them, and as he accepts the leash from the blonde girl, realizes that he knows her – well, sort of knows her. She’s in his English class and his bio lab at school, and he’d stood behind her and a dark-haired girl in the lunch line the previous day, unintentionally eavesdropping on their not-entirely-uninteresting dissection of the latest _Game of Thrones_ episode. “Thank you,” he says, meeting her wide green eyes.

He can tell that she recognizes him, too. “Of course,” she says.

“J.B., say thank you,” he says pointedly. His sister looks up, her face shining with tears, or dog slobber, or maybe both.

“Thank you.”

The girl waves her off. “I’m just glad I caught the little guy before he got hit by a car. Did you say his name is Hotdog?”

“Yup.”

“That’s cute.” Tugging lightly on the straps of her backpack, she turns back to Jughead. “Do you, um – you have English second period with Ms. Lauriette, right?”

Jughead nods. “Yeah. And…you do, too?” He shakes his head. “Obviously, that’s why you’re asking.”

She smiles. “I’m Betty.”

 _Betty_ , he repeats in his head. These last few days of school, he’d only noticed her in passing. Now, standing face to face, it hits him just how _pretty_ she is. He swallows.

“I’m Jughead. And this is Jellybean.” He nudges his sister gently with his foot.

“J.B.,” she corrects him.

If Betty finds their names odd at all, she doesn’t let it show. “Are you guys new here? I don’t think I’ve seen you around the neighborhood before.”

“We moved here eight days ago,” J.B. says, finally tearing her eyes away from Hotdog as she hops up onto her feet. “We’re from Toledo. It’s in Ohio.”

“We’re just down the block that way.” Jughead tilts his head in the direction of home.

Betty’s face lights up. “Me too! I was just walking home from practice.”

“Do you live in the house with the treehouse?” J.B. asks, clearly excited by the prospect.

“No, but I know exactly which house you mean. I live next door.”

It’s as good a cue as any for the three of them to begin making their way home, J.B. letting Hotdog pull her ahead as Betty and Jughead fall into step together.

“So, eight days…how do you like Riverdale so far?”

 “It’s alright.” He shrugs. “I’m still getting my bearings.”

Truthfully, he hasn’t had much of an opportunity to explore it yet. Most of the week had been spent cleaning, painting, unpacking, and making last-minute trips to the Target in nearby Greendale. Their one foray into town – aside from the grocery store – had been a diner called Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe, where Carl said he’d hung out as a teen growing up in Riverdale. Jughead had liked their burgers, and the authentically old-fashioned feel of the place. Carl claimed the diner was completely unchanged from when he’d been a regular some thirty-odd years ago, from the neon-lit sign in the parking lot down to the $3.99 milkshake-and-fries combo on the menu.

“Well, I’ve lived here all my life, so if you’ve got any questions, I’ve probably got answers.” Betty drifts to a stop as they reach the driveway of a large white house, set further back from the street than the others around it. “This is me.”

Jughead silently clocks the distance from their new home: five doors down. “Cool. Thanks again for finding Hotdog. Seriously.” He offers her a small smile, and hopes the heat rising in his cheeks is too subtle for her to see beneath the shade of the maple trees lining the sidewalk.

“No worries.” Betty smiles back, a bright, toothy smile that he already knows is going to get stuck in the back of his mind like chewing gum on the sole of his shoe. “I’ll see you in class, Jughead.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

J.B. unclips Hotdog from his leash as soon as she’s through the front door and makes a beeline for the television in the living room, the dog following eagerly on her heels.

Jughead drifts after her, leaning against the back of the sofa while she pulls up the Netflix menu. “What are you watching?”

“Degrassi.”

Of course. She’s been binge-watching the show at every opportunity ever since Carl had set up the tv with his account, and as luck would have it, there are over a dozen seasons for her to catch up on. Jughead suspects the subject matter is a little mature for a fifth grader, based on the quick glimpses he’s caught, but it’s not like policing J.B.’s media consumption is _his_ job.

“Mom said no tv before you do your homework,” he reminds her.

J.B. cranes her neck back to look at him. “Seriously, Juggie?”

He raises an eyebrow, then grins. Despite the afternoon’s Hotdog mishap, he’s not especially interested in playing the role of babysitter today. “Nah. I don’t care.”

J.B. continues to stare at him over the back of the couch, her message clear: _Okay, then go away, Jug._

He rolls his eyes and scratches Hotdog on the head before retreating up the stairs to his bedroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead shuts the door and flops onto his bed, tugging a few pillows beneath his head so he can see out the window into the backyard.

It’s the same twin-sized bed he had in Toledo, but in a room that’s nearly double the size of the one he grew up in, it feels smaller than ever. His feet dangle over the edge of the mattress, the result of a summer growth spurt that had had his mother sighing heavily every time he complained that a pair of shoes pinched, or a pair of jeans suddenly hung too short around his ankles.

It had felt significant, that sense that something was _off_ , against the backdrop of a summer that had otherwise been passing almost exactly as he’d expected: watching J.B. during the day; working at the movie theater; hanging out in Sweet Pea’s basement; plugging away at the mess of prose he’d begun to think of as his novel.

And then one warm, humid evening, as he was sitting with Toni on the roof of her building, passing a clove cigarette back and forth while her parents fought in the apartment below, his mother had called. He’d answered the phone, which he didn’t normally do, because Toni had been quiet ever since they’d climbed up the fire escape and onto the roof, which she normally wasn’t.

 _You need to come home_ , Gladys had said.

It was all she’d said, and so he had. He can still remember how hard his heart had beaten in his chest, how his calves had screamed in protest as he pedaled home on his bike. He remembers thinking that if something had happened to J.B., she would’ve been crying, but she wasn’t, so it was probably about his dad.

He remembers the sheer _relief_ he’d felt when the bad news turned out to be not so bad after all: Carl’s father had broken his hip in a fall while trying to change the smoke alarm battery in his kitchen.

In retrospect, what it meant could not have been clearer. At the time, though, Jughead hadn’t really understood what his mother was trying to say. He was angry. He wasn’t sure why this rose to the level of a “family meeting” – _they,_ these four people, were not a family. They were a family plus Carl, the guy who’d been dating his mom for about a year and a half. Yes, he’d proposed back in the spring – and yes, Jughead’s mom had accepted – but there was no wedding date on the calendar. Nothing permanent. He’d never met Carl’s father, didn’t even know his name.

And so he’d listened, and nodded, and expressed his sympathy to Carl, and gone to bed thinking not of fathers and sons and _change_ , but of the way Toni’s pink hair had shone in the soft light of the setting sun.

Three days later, Carl and Gladys had dragged Jughead and his sister downtown for a midday “surprise” that turned out to be a five-minute marriage ceremony at the city courthouse.

That weekend Jughead had called out sick from work so he could watch J.B. while the newlyweds drove nine hours east to New York, to a small town called Greendale where Carl’s parents now lived, neighboring the one where he’d grown up. Jughead had thought they were going for a visit.

They’d ended up buying a house.

And now it’s his house – _their_ house – the Jones-Harrisons’, or Harrison-Jones’, or whatever it is they’re supposed to call themselves now, though neither adult has floated the idea of Jughead or J.B. changing their last name. (Probably because they know he’d refuse, and not in a nice way.)

The space, he thinks, is the hardest thing to get used to. After the cramped apartment the Joneses had occupied for years back in Ohio, the house in Riverdale feels like a mansion, its grassy green backyard like a football field. His mother and Carl seemed to take it in stride – it was the sort of house Carl had spent his childhood in, presumably – but he can see his own hesitation mirrored in his sister’s face every time they walk through the front door: _is this really all for us?_

Jughead stares out the window at nothing in particular, thinking about nothing in particular, until his phone buzzes in his pocket.

It’s his mom, he notes with disappointment, asking what toppings they want on their pizza. He texts back a quick reply – sausage, mushrooms, extra cheese – and then thumbs back to the main screen. Nothing new from his friends back home, though it’s not as though he’s sent any texts himself in the past few days. He opens the Instagram app, and watches a story Toni had posted around lunchtime: a boomerang of Fangs’ face, his eyebrows raising up and back down again while he chews on a mouthful of french fries.

Jughead watches it three times before he drops the phone face-down onto his bedside table. Tugging his beanie off of his head, he curls up, his back to the window, and tries to quell his wandering mind enough to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He rouses to the sound of the garage door grinding open.

His mother, Carl, and J.B. are all gathered around the kitchen island when he stumbles down the stairs and into the room, helping themselves to slices of pizza. “There he is,” Carl says, and hands him a paper plate.

Jughead mumbles _thanks_ and grabs two pieces for himself, pleased to see there’s a second, unopened pizza box beneath the first. He’s basically starving.

“How was school?” Gladys asks once they’re all seated at the round kitchen table. It’s new, one of the few items in the house that actually looks like it belongs in the space that it occupies.

“Fine,” he says through a mouthful of cheese.

“Exactly what your sister said,” she remarks. “What are the odds.”

“We met our neighbor today,” J.B. says, tearing off a chunk of crust with her teeth. “Her name’s Betty. She’s a cheerleader.”

“I knew there were some kids in this neighborhood,” Carl says. “Is she your age?”

Jughead shakes his head. “She’s in my grade. I have some classes with her.”

“I think Juggie _likes_ her,” J.B. adds smugly.

He looks at her in disbelief. “I talked to her for like, five seconds.”

His mother and Carl exchange a look across the table, and Jughead frowns down at his dinner plate, knowing what’s coming next.

“You should invite her over for dinner sometime,” Carl says.

“I don’t even _know_ her,” Jughead mutters. “That would be weird.”

“I invited Alyssa over for dinner,” J.B. chirps.

“Who the hell is Alyssa?”

“Jughead. Language,” Gladys says, her voice sharp, and Jughead rolls his eyes. Like he didn’t grow up hearing far worse things at the dinner table for the thirteen years they’d all lived with his dad.

“My friend,” J.B. says, with no further explanation.

“I am not inviting Betty over for dinner.” Jughead pushes back his chair and stands up to grab his third – and fourth, why not – slices of pizza. “Or anyone.”

“Okay, I’ll invite her,” J.B. says brightly.

Jughead sighs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day at lunchtime Jughead slips into what’s becoming his ‘usual’ seat: a spot at the end of a table otherwise occupied by a trio of boys in hoodies who play some sort of fantasy-based card game in near-silence for all forty-eight minutes of the break. Dressed in his own hoodie-based ensemble, he more or less blends right in, but neither he nor they have made any overtures at conversation despite sitting within three feet of each other for five days straight.

And honestly…Jughead is okay with that. He’s got food in front of him, and a novel, and that’s all he really needs. Though he’d had Toni and Fangs and Sweet Pea to hang out with back home, he’d always been somewhat of a quiet-loner-weirdo kid; now he’s the _new_ quiet-loner-weirdo kid. He’s starting junior year in a high school with 500 people who have known each other since the sandbox days. He’s under no illusion that anyone at Riverdale High is jumping at the chance to be his new best friend, or even acquaintance.  

So when he feels a tap on his shoulder a few minutes later, he startles, dropping his half-eaten roast beef sandwich onto his open book. He curses under his breath before he looks up to see who it is.

“Sorry! Sorry. Hi, um – it’s Betty, from yesterday?”

A sarcastic retort forms on the tip of his tongue – it’s not like he’s face-blind – but he bites it back. “Hey.”

“I thought I’d see if you wanted to sit with my friends and me.”

She gestures to a round table that’s closer to the windows, where two boys and the dark-haired girl he’d seen the other day are making a poor showing of pretending not to watch his and Betty’s interaction. “I’m so sorry about your book,” she adds.

“It’s okay,” Jughead assures her, his ears growing hot as he wipes crumbs off of the pages into the palm of his hand. Whereas his solitary lunch habits had felt appealingly erudite and aloof compared to the boys at the other end of the table, in front of Betty and her friends, they just feel kind of…pathetic. “I uh – I don’t want to intrude, or anything.”

Betty bites her bottom lip like she’s trying to hold back a smile. “We have an empty seat. It’s not a big deal.”

“Okay. Yeah, sure.” He forces a smile back, and after gathering his things follows her across the room.

“This is Jughead,” she announces once they reach the table. “He lives down the street from us, Arch.”

The redhead nods. “Cool. Nice to meet you, man.”

“This is Archie, and Kevin, and Veronica,” Betty continues. Kevin also nods hello, but Veronica leans forward, extending her hand across the table, her gold bracelet clinking against the cheap plastic. For one fleeting, wild moment, Jughead isn’t certain whether he’s meant to shake it, or kiss it.

He opts for the former, though he suspects she’d also accept the latter without blinking an eye. “Veronica Lodge,” she says, giving his hand two firm pumps. “And did Betty say your name is _Jughead?_ ”

It’s a miracle, really, that this hasn’t come up yet even though he’s been through nearly a full week of school at this point. “It’s a nickname.”

She props her chin in her hand, eyes bright with interest. “What’s it short for?”

Veronica, he decides immediately, is way too intense. He averts his gaze, dragging a french fry through the ketchup on his tray. “Just…a nickname.”

“Archie lives in the house with the treehouse,” Betty jumps in. “We used to play in there all the time.”

“Nice.” Jughead glances at Archie, who sits up a little in his chair. “My little sister thought it was really cool when we walked by.”

“You should bring her over,” Archie says. “My dad always says he’s gonna knock it down, and I’m like, c’mon. _Memories_.”

“I have _great_ memories of the treehouse,” Kevin interjects. “Remember when I fell out of it and broke my leg? Good times.”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “You fell from like, three feet off the ground.”

“And amazingly enough, my leg was still just as broken.”

Betty giggles. “You wouldn’t even climb up there, Veronica.”

“I’d get dirt under my fingernails,” she says primly.

“Never stopped Betty,” Archie says with a grin.

“Yeah, and my mom actually _cared_ if I had dirt in my nails.” Betty smiles back at the redheaded boy across the table, a faint blush coloring her cheeks, and Jughead realizes that she hasn’t taken her eyes off of him ever since they sat back down.

So. That settles the question that’s been rattling around in the back of his head ever since she’d handed Hotdog’s leash over to him yesterday afternoon.

It’s not exactly shocking. They’re probably two of the most attractive people he’s seen since moving to Riverdale – or ever, really – and the letterman jacket resting comfortably over Archie’s shoulders suggests he’s a member of whatever team it is Betty spends her afternoons cheering for. It’s just…awfully conventional. The jock and the cheerleader. The girl-and-boy-next-door. They’ll blink and be married with 2.5 kids before they know it.

“Anyway,” Veronica drawls, “Jughead. What’s your deal? Where are you from, what are you into…dark secrets, tragic histories…?”

As far as tragic histories go, he’s pretty sure his alcoholic dad fits the bill, but he’s also pretty sure that none of the well-fed, neatly dressed, comfortably suburban kids seated around him want to hear about it. “I’m from Toledo. No dark secrets,” he says. “We moved here because my stepdad’s parents live in Greendale.”

To his relief, the mere mention of Greendale is enough to send the focus spiraling away from Jughead – they’re Riverdale’s football rivals, he gathers, and the opposing team in the homecoming game later this month. He lets the conversation fold over and around him. If he closed his eyes, he thinks, he could almost imagine it’s Sweet Pea and Toni and Fangs talking over one another, laughing, teasing.

Eventually the bell rings, followed by the sound of at least a hundred chairs scraping against the tile floor in near-unison. “So I’ll see you at seven, Archiekins?” Veronica says, slipping her arm through the strap of her black leather handbag.

“Can’t wait,” Archie confirms.

Betty freezes, her backpack hanging from one shoulder. “What’s at seven?”

“Ronnie got us tickets to see Sven Svenson at the Bijou,” he says. “He’s this like, totally _amazing_ guitar player.”

“I thought it might serve as some inspiration for our own budding musical genius,” Veronica chimes in.

“Archie,” Betty says slowly, “I thought you were going to help me babysit the twins tonight.”

The air grows thick with tension so abruptly that Jughead wonders if he’s been the proverbial frog-in-the-pot all along – blissfully ignorant to the feelings simmering just beneath the surface. He glances at Kevin, whose eyes are darting back and forth between the girls and Archie, his expression inscrutable.

“Shit.” Archie appears dumbfounded. “I – I’m so sorry, Betts. I completely forgot.”

Betty blinks rapidly, her fingers curling into the straps of her backpack. “Oh.”

Veronica shifts on her feet, looking uncomfortable. “I didn’t realize you already had plans, Archie,” she says.

Exhaling a shaky breath, Betty turns her gaze to Veronica. “Yeah, I…I mean, it’s okay. They’re kind of a lot to handle, but…”

“I swear I would help, Betty, but I said I’d hang out with Moose,” Kevin says, after a long beat of silence. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” But Betty bites her lower lip, frowning.

“I can help,” Jughead hears himself say.

Four sets of eyes jump to him, all of them variations on _surprised:_ Betty and Veronica and Archie like they can’t imagine why he’d volunteer for such a thing; Kevin like he’d completely forgotten Jughead was even there.

“Really?” Betty says. “You don’t have to.”

He shrugs, tugging at his beanie self-consciously. “I don’t know anyone. It’s not like I’ve got plans.”

Kevin points a single finger-gun in his direction. “True.”

“I could maybe come over after,” Archie offers, apparently desperate to save face. “I think it’ll be over by like, ten, right Ronnie?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Veronica snaps.

Betty ignores all of them, and turns to Jughead. “Are you sure? It’s my sister’s kids, so we’re not getting paid. But I was going to order a pizza.”

Jughead shrugs again. “I like pizza.”

She studies him for a moment, her mouth curling up into the barest of smiles. “Okay. Come over at six?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s on her doorstep at six on the dot.

Jughead hesitates, finger on the doorbell. It’s more than a little embarrassing, he realizes, to not only volunteer to spend your Friday night babysitting a couple of kids you’ve never met with a girl you barely know – _for free_ – but to show up precisely on time. This is high school. Punctuality is a sign of weakness.

But Betty had just looked so _sad_ , standing there with her pink backpack and her white Keds and her ponytail, let down by the boy she was clearly in love with.

That’s not to say he hadn’t second-guessed the whole thing. In fact, about thirty seconds after they’d all filtered out of the cafeteria, he’d turned back to give her some flimsy excuse for why he couldn’t come over after all. But Betty had already disappeared down another hallway, and he didn’t have her phone number, nor another class with her before the end of the day. He was locked in.

He rings the doorbell.

She answers it, dressed down in yoga pants and a t-shirt, gold nail polish twinkling up at him from her bare feet. “Hi! Come on in.”

The first thing that he notices about the house is that it’s very, very beige; the second is that it’s very, very clean. He follows Betty past the front staircase and into the living room, where a pair of children with strawberry blond hair sit perched on cushions behind a large wooden coffee table, each one scribbling furiously at a coloring book.

“Jughead, this is Juniper and Dagwood,” Betty says. “Guys, this is my friend Jughead. Will you say hi?”

There’s a long pause, and then one of them – the boy – deigns to look up. “Hi.”

Another pause, and Betty crosses her arms over her chest. “Junie?”

The girl turns her head, and eyes Jughead with what he’d consider a remarkable amount of shrewdness for a kid who probably only learned to use a toilet within the past year. “Hi,” she says, and turns back to her crayons.

“They’re so rude,” Betty murmurs, soft enough that they can’t hear her. Jughead fights back a grin.

“It’s okay. Little kids are shy.”

“Not these kids,” she mutters. “Do you want some pizza?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite Betty’s earlier claim that her niece and nephew were a “handful,” Juniper and Dagwood seem content with their coloring books as _Frozen_ plays on the tv. When she asks them if they want more pizza, they look at her as though she’s grown a second head, and Betty sighs, gesturing for Jughead to follow her out of the room.

“Thank again for doing this,” she says, watching from across the kitchen table as he eats what’s got to be his sixth or seventh slice of pizza in the last twenty-four hours. “I know it’s not exactly a thrilling Friday night.”

“I can see why you wanted some company,” he replies. “Do you watch them a lot?”

Betty shakes her head. “My sister and her husband are away for the weekend. My mom normally watches them, but she’s on a date tonight. My parents are divorced,” she adds.

Jughead glances out to the living room, where the twins are still coloring in silence. “I know this is an ironic question from a person named Jughead, but – what’s the deal with _Dagwood_ and _Juniper_?”

Betty laughs; her laugh is a little looser, a little goofier than he’d expected, and he feels a warm rush of pleasure at the sound. “They’re these like, old family names on my brother-in-law’s side. He’s a Blossom – do you know who the Blossoms are yet?” He shakes his head, and she smirks. “Well, you will.”

“You could just tell me.”

“I’m not sure I could do them justice.” Betty picks at the edge of the pizza box, tearing off a thin shred of cardboard that she rolls between her fingers. “Do you miss Toledo?”

When he doesn’t answer right away, she pulls her hands back into her lap. “Sorry. That’s kind of personal.”

“It’s okay.” Jughead sits back in his chair. “I do. My friends, mostly.”

His friends, whom he hasn’t heard from in six days. Not that he’s keeping track.

“I think I’d be lost if I had to move now,” Betty says. “I’ve known Archie and Kevin and Veronica my whole life.”

His mouth lifts up into a half-smile. “I can tell.”

Betty looks sheepish. “I hope we didn’t scare you off at lunch today. I think we’re kind of…well, we’ve got our patterns, I guess.”

He waits for her to say more, and when she doesn’t, he shrugs. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Before she can respond, his phone buzzes loudly in his pocket. His mouth goes dry when he sees the name on the lock screen. He glances up at Betty, who nods and stands up, flipping the pizza box shut, beginning to tidy up.

Jughead stands, pressing the phone to his ear. “Toni.”

“Hey Jones.” Hearing her voice feels like – maybe not a punch in the stomach, but in the arm, playful yet still sharp enough to bruise. “What’s up?”

He crosses an arm over his middle, cupping his elbow in his hand. “I don’t know. You called me.”

It’s passive-aggressive, he knows, and not at all how he wanted his first conversation with her since the move to go. There are so many things he wants to ask her. _Why haven’t you called until now? Why haven’t you texted?_

_Why did you kiss me?_

There are voices in the background; he thinks he hears _Shut up, Sweet Pea_ , and then muffled laughter. His stomach twists into a knot. They’re all together, he thinks, just the first of so many Friday nights they’ll spend without him.

Toni breezes past his answer. “Sweet Pea wants to know if he can have your bike.”

“No. Tell him I brought it with me, dumbass.”

The sound goes fuzzy again. _He says you’re a dumbass_ , he hears, and the laughter that follows is clearer this time.

“Hey.” Now it’s Sweet Pea himself on the phone. “How you holding up?”

Jughead shoots a glance at Betty; she’s on her tiptoes beside the kitchen sink, reaching up into a cabinet, her shirt riding up an inch or two to reveal the bare skin of her back. He turns away, leaning against the doorframe. “Fine.”

“Doing good in school?”

Jughead rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

“Making new friends?”

He knows Betty can’t hear the other end of the conversation, but he lowers his voice anyway. “No. I don’t know.”

“Well, we miss you, man.”

It’s classic Sweet Pea, the abrupt left turn from sarcastic to sincere, and Jughead feels a tug of guilt in his gut. “Yeah, I miss you guys too.”

“Soon as I fix my car, we’re gonna come visit.”

Jughead cracks a smile.  “Cool. See you in about eight years, I guess.”

“So fucking funny, Jughead.” There’s another pause, another sound like Sweet Pea’s placed his palm over the speaker. “Alright, here’s Toni.”

Hot, sharp panic rises up in his throat like bile. “I’m not – I can’t actually talk right now.”

“Oh. Okay—”

He hangs up.

Stuffing his phone into his pocket, Jughead turns around and finds Betty with her back still to him, now elbow-deep in a bowl of flour and sugar. “Sorry,” he says, stepping closer. He pauses. “What’s all this?”

She glances over her shoulder. “I thought I’d make some brownies. It’s one of the things they actually like.”

He eyes the array of ingredients on the counter around her. “From scratch?”

“It’s the only way,” she says brightly. “It won’t take too long. Do you want to go check on the twins?”

The answer is _no, not really_ , but he does it anyway. Dagwood and Juniper barely acknowledge his presence in the room, though they seem to have moved on from their coloring to messing around with a pile of Legos.

Jughead squats down beside Dagwood, eyeing the colored blocks in his hands curiously. “What’s that?”

“A Tesla,” Dagwood replies absently.

Jughead raises his eyebrows, clapping his hands together once as he stands back up. “Oookay.”

Betty is cracking eggs into a bowl when he walks back into the kitchen. “They’re really well-behaved,” he observes, leaning against the counter as he watches her neatly dispose of the leftover eggshells. It’s nicer, he figures, than what he wants to say, which is _they’re really fucking weird._ “J.B. was such a nightmare when she was that age.”

“Your sister?” Betty glances at him for confirmation. “Did you used to babysit her a lot?”

Amid his parents’ constant fighting and his father’s long absences and his mother’s erratic work schedule, he’d basically been a third parent all her life. But Betty doesn’t need to know that. “Yeah,” he says.

“You really should bring her over to Archie’s sometime,” she muses. “I always offer to take Junie and Dagwood up into the treehouse, and they never want to.”

“Why, are they afraid they’ll mess up their clothes?” Her look is all the answer he needs. Jughead laughs, scratching at the back of his head.

It’s not long before Betty is ready to pop the brownies into the oven. As she sets the timer, he sets the dirty bowls into the sink and begins to wash them.

“You don’t have to do that,” Betty says, sounding surprised.

“I don’t mind,” Jughead says with a shrug. He hadn’t lived in a home with a dishwasher until he was fourteen, and by that point, old habits died hard.

She crosses her arms and leans back against the counter, watching him. “Archie practically throws a fit if you ask him to do dishes,” she remarks.

 _Archie, Archie, Archie_. “So you guys grew up next to each other?”

Betty nods, a soft smile forming on her lips. “Since we were five.”

Jughead places one of the bowls onto the drying rack. “Has he always been so forgetful?”

She’s quiet for a long moment, and when he dares look at her, her face has fallen into a slight frown. “He’s not –” She stops, then starts again. “He’s kind of flaky. But Archie’s my best friend. He’s the best.”

It’s a funny way to describe the person who ditched you for a concert with another girl. But his own best friend had randomly kissed him and then ignored him for over a week, so Jughead supposes he hasn’t got room to talk.

“He’s just really busy with stuff now that we’re back in school,” Betty continues. “He’s got football, and guitar lessons – I keep telling him he needs to get a day planner, but he—”

“Okay,” Jughead interrupts, setting another bowl beside the first. “You’ve convinced me. Archie’s great.”

“Do you play any sports?” She says it with the slightest hint of accusation, suggesting she knows the answer is _no._

Jughead scoffs. “Definitely not.”

“So what _do_ you do all day?”

“Besides contemplate my own mortality?” He sneaks a glance at her face; she does not appear amused. (Fair enough. It’s not his best line.) “I read. I write.”

Betty uncrosses her arms from over her chest. “What do you write?”

“Lately? Garbage.” Finished with the dishes, he rinses his hands and then turns off the tap, wiping his damp hands on his jeans. “Well. Garbage that I’m hoping I can eventually recycle into a novel,” he amends.

“That’s ambitious.”

He snorts. “That’s one word for it.”

“Would you ever want to write for the school paper?” she asks, tilting her head slightly. “I’m the student editor, and we really need more staff writers. Right now it’s just me and Ethel Muggs trying to cover everything.”

Jughead leans back against the counter, facing her. “Extracurriculars…are not really my thing.”

“It’d look good on your college applications.” Betty nudges his shin lightly with her foot, and something flutters gently through his stomach. That last piece of pizza, maybe. “It’s fun. And you get a pass that lets you out of study hall so you can work in the Blue and Gold office instead, which is nice.”

Jughead makes a face. She’s not wrong about the college applications – if he’s got any hope of getting a scholarship somewhere, even a community college, he’ll need something other than _writing and deleting and rewriting the first scene of my novel_ _over and over again_ to list under the “activities” section. “I’ll consider it.”

Betty grins, and does a tiny fist pump into the air. “Victory!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

She scores another one when the brownies come out of the oven, their scent too alluring for even the Blossom twins to resist.

“These are really good,” Juniper mumbles, crumbs falling out of her mouth as she speaks.

“I want more,” Dagwood announces as he reaches for the pan with grubby hands.

Betty gives Jughead a high-five under the kitchen table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two hours and one sugar-induced crash-and-burn later, the twins are tucked into their beds in the guest room, and Jughead sits on the living room sofa with Betty, a full cushion of space between them. She’s slumped against the arm of the sofa, feet propped on the coffee table, and though he’d asked her if she wanted to go to bed herself, she’d suggested they watch something on Netflix instead.

“I’m surprised you like this movie,” she murmurs, pointing her toes towards the screen in a languid stretch as Jimmy Stewart’s camera swings from an amorous couple’s embrace, to a man tapping away at his piano.

Jughead frowns. “Why? It’s a classic.”

“All my friends think old movies are boring,” she sighs, letting her head flop against the back of the couch. “Well, except Veronica. But she only likes epic romances.”

“This movie’s got romance,” he says. “Maybe not an epic one. Not even a _good_ one, really. But, still.”

Betty turns her head towards him. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know….” He shrugs. “She’s _Grace Kelly._ They don’t have much in common.”

“But she loves him.”

“Sure, but…they wouldn’t work out in real life. He’s this globe-trotting photojournalist, and she’s this socialite…it’s not practical.”

“It’s a _movie_ , Jughead,” Betty laughs.

“He’s also a _lot_ older than her.”

“Mm, that’s true,” she concedes.

They watch for a few more minutes in silence. Jughead can’t stop his eyes from drifting to the side every now and then, to watch her expression shift in response to what’s happening on screen, the changing shape of her mouth. He’s not sure he’s ever seen someone get so engrossed in a movie – let alone one they’ve seen before – other than maybe J.B. when she was a toddler, and captivated by pretty much anything that was colorful and moved.

He forces his gaze back to the television, over and over, lest she catch him staring.

As the scene shifts into a long take with no dialogue, he clears his throat. “If your friends won’t watch _Rear Window_ with you, you need to get some new friends.”

He can hear the smile in her voice without looking. “You volunteering?”

Jughead smiles, too.


	2. two

“Do you want to go shopping for the dance this weekend?”

Betty pushes her seat back from the table, stretching her arms up over her head, which is beginning to pulse with the dull thrum of a headache. She glances at the clock on the wall above the main desk; she and Veronica have been at the school library for nearly two hours now, studying for their first AP U.S. History exam of the school year.

Betty’s eyebrows had shot up in surprise that morning when _Veronica_ had been the one to suggest an after-school study session, but her friend had merely shrugged in response. “I have to get serious, B,” she’d said. “Contrary to popular belief, my dad can’t _literally_ buy me admittance to Columbia.”

“Sure,” Betty says now, wincing slightly as she cracks her knuckles against her palms. “Although I thought you’d already have something on its way over from Paris.”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “That was _one time_ , and it was for Nick’s prom,” she insists, scribbling something into her notebook. “This is just homecoming.”

Though it was true that a Riverdale High homecoming dance paled in comparison to prom at a tony Manhattan private school, Betty was looking forward to it. This was the first year she’d really had a chance to step into a leadership role on the dance committee, and the thought of walking into a sparkling gymnasium decorated according to _her_ vision – flanked by her three best friends, like always – well, it was exciting.

“I’m teasing.” Betty hesitates, and then folds over the corner of the page in her textbook. The battered book has clearly seen better days – around 2006 or so, judging by the list of previous readers scrawled in the front cover – but she still feels a twinge of guilt. Her mother’s voice echoes inside her head: _I taught you better than to deface school property, Elizabeth._

“I think I’m going to head home. You ready?”

Veronica sighs, flipping to the next page in her textbook. “Not hardly. Pray for me, Betty Cooper.”

Leaning across the table, Betty ruffles her friend’s hair with affection. “You’ll do fine. Don’t stay too late. If you don’t text me that you’re home by eight I’ll tell Smithers to come get you myself.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Veronica smiles up at her, and Betty smiles back, surprised to feel a pleasant little glow warming her chest. And _relieved_ , too – because something had been feeling off between Betty and her best friend ever since she’d returned home from her summer internship in L.A. a month ago.

At first, Betty had written it off as her own growing pains: somehow Riverdale just didn’t quite _fit_ anymore after eight weeks on the West Coast. Eight weeks of palm trees and kombucha, taco trucks and smog, traffic jams and heat rising off the cement in hazy, invisible waves.

Eight weeks in which she’d felt professional for the first time in her life, working in a cubicle, wearing brand new slacks and skirts and button-down shirts her mother had purchased from Ann Taylor Loft.

Eight weeks in which she’d only called Alice once per week, on Sundays, and otherwise ignored her texts.

Eight weeks in which she’d clutched a sweaty can of beer at a house party and kissed a boy in the backyard, and then done more than just kiss.

(So far, she’s only told Kevin about that last part.)

That new, unfamiliar discomfort had worn off in a week or two. She’d slipped back into her routines the way one pulls on an old pair of fall boots that have sat in the back of the closet all summer. She settled in, relaxed, and let Riverdale feel like home again.

When she was alone with Veronica, though, the energy between them just felt…weird.

It wasn’t anything anyone else would notice, and it wasn’t something Betty could confront her about. It wasn’t even something Betty could put into words. It was just – a pause in conversation that lasted a second too long; a smile that flickered onto Veronica’s face a little bit later than it should have.

The thing with Archie and the concert tickets hadn’t helped.

But Veronica had clearly been making an effort to make it up to her ever since – showing up at Betty’s front door with coffee and croissants the morning after the show, complimenting her outfits at lunch every day, loudly praising her moves at cheerleading practice.

If it was all getting to be a little over-the-top – well, that was Veronica’s way.

The walk home from school is pleasantly cool, a light breeze tugging at Betty’s ponytail while the orange-yellow light of the slowly setting sun filters through the trees. If you asked Betty – which no one ever does, but if someone ever _did_ – she’d say that this is the best time of year in Riverdale, when the fall leaves are at their prettiest, and it’s still warm enough to eat dinner outside in the crisp, clear air, as long as you remember a blanket to tuck around your shoulders once the sun dips below the horizon.

Of course, she can’t even remember the last time she _actually_ had dinner in her backyard, eating burgers and buttered corn-on-the-cob with a paper napkin tucked into the collar of her shirt. That was something the Coopers had always done as a family: her father grilling on the deck, her mother preparing a salad in the kitchen, Polly and Betty setting the table and brushing ants off of the plastic chair cushions. There was something about enjoying a meal in the fresh air that made them all feel a little looser, a little more relaxed, than they ever did in their usual seats at the dining room table.

But dining _al fresco_ had become more and more infrequent after Polly moved out of the house, and practically nonexistent after the divorce. As Alice liked to say, what was the point?

(The point, Betty had thought, but never said, was that they were still a family. Two people were still a family, even if one of them seemed to have given up on the concept altogether.)

Her mother isn’t home yet when Betty lets herself through the front door – no surprise, given the series of texts about _going to press_ and _total idiots_ that had hit her cell phone about an hour before school let out for the day. She slips a portion of leftover lasagna into the toaster oven and sinks onto the living room sofa, thumbing open her phone. Her inbox contains a string of indecipherable emojis from Kevin, a slightly blurry picture of her dad’s new Labrador rescue, and – most intriguingly – a message from Jughead Jones.

Upon closer inspection, it’s a group text between her, Jughead, and Ethel. Just a simple question about whether or not they’re meeting for the newspaper tomorrow afternoon. Betty shoots off the answer without really thinking about it – _yes_ – and then immediately wishes she could retract it.

She should’ve let Ethel answer.

From the moment Jughead had walked through the door and into the office of the Blue and Gold, Ethel had been openly smitten with the new boy. Betty had never seen her behave so giggly and awkward around a guy before – leaning in close over his shoulder as she showed him how their layout software worked, and laughing at _all_ of his jokes, even the ones he himself clearly knew weren’t funny.

It was kind of adorable, even if Jughead had seemed oblivious to her attention. And Betty had to admit that she didn’t question Ethel’s taste in this particular instance. Jughead was cute. He had a long, straight nose and the kind of grayish, bluish eyes that seemed to change color depending on the light. His hair was dark and thick and wavy, and even though his beanie was kind of weird and threadbare, its constant presence on his head pushed a lock of hair over his forehead in a way that wasn’t unappealing.

Having Jughead in her house a few weeks ago had made her oddly nervous, and not only because she had agreed to spend her entire Friday evening with a boy she hardly knew while Polly’s children plotted world domination in the living room. But by the end of the night, when he’d woken her up with a hand on her shoulder as the end credits to _Rear Window_ played, she realized that it had been surprisingly easy to while away a few hours with him.

(He’d left soon after, and when she’d gone upstairs, the light to Archie’s bedroom had been on. She’d wondered if Archie would see Jughead walking home, and what he’d think of it, knowing the other boy had been at Betty’s house with her past midnight.)

Her phone buzzes a moment later with Jughead’s reply: _thanks._

Under normal circumstances, she’d write back _of course!_ and maybe throw in a smile emoji for emphasis. But it’s Jughead – and, she suspects, Ethel’s First Big Crush – so she closes the screen and turns on the television instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She wakes to the dim blue glow of the tv screen, and a soft hand on the crown of her head.

“Hey, Mom,” she croaks, propping herself up on one elbow as her mother looks down at her.

“It’s past midnight,” her mother says, voice low, as though there are others in the house who might be woken. Force of habit, Betty supposes.

Betty yawns, remembering at the last moment to cover her mouth with her hand. “I fell asleep.”

“You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?” She sounds guilty – a rarity, though these days, not as rare as it used to be.

“No.”

Her mother looks unconvinced as she smooths a hand over Betty’s hair, her lips pursed. “Well, you’d better get up to bed. You’re not going to school late tomorrow. Make sure you use that new facewash I got you, I left it by your sink. You’ve been breaking out lately.”

Betty frowns, running her fingers absently over her chin. She’s had a pimple or two pop up in the last week or so, but she thought she’d been doing a pretty good job of covering them up. Evidently, not good enough to fool Alice Cooper. “Okay.”

She splashes water on her face in the bathroom upstairs, ignoring the little blue bottle of facewash set beside the hand soap, and falls back asleep within minutes of crawling into her bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Veronica rings Betty’s doorbell at eleven on the dot on Saturday morning, an almond milk latte in hand, extra foam, just the way Betty likes it.

“I made us a lunch reservation at Sospeso, I hope that’s okay. It’s my treat,” Veronica tells her as Smithers pulls away from the curb. “And then I thought we could check out Neiman’s, Bloomingdale’s, maybe Nordstrom?”

“Sure.” Betty nods and smiles before she takes a careful sip of her coffee. There’s no way she can afford a dress from Neiman Marcus, especially not for a homecoming dance, but trying on gowns that cost more than Betty’s entire wardrobe is half the fun of shopping with Veronica.

At the restaurant they order their usual array of small plates – pita with hummus and tapenade, burrata with tomatoes and prosciutto, seared shrimp dripping in butter and garlic. Though Veronica’s been a little quieter than usual all morning – leading Betty to wonder if last night was one of the rare evenings when Mrs. Lodge gives in and lets her daughter help finish off a bottle of red wine – Betty can’t help but be in a good mood. Strained relationship aside, dining out with Veronica has always been one of her very favorite things to do. Alice Cooper’s cooking was undeniably good, but rarely strayed from the all-American, meat-and-potatoes lane. Anything with the faintest whiff of foreignness about it – be it pad thai or panzanella – was something Betty only enjoyed when she was eating on the Lodges’ dime.

“I’m excited about the Blue and Gold this year,” Betty says, cutting into the creamy white burrata with the side of her fork. “Like, we have an actual _staff._ And Jughead seems really smart. Don’t tell anyone this, but,” she leans forward a little, “I think Ethel has a crush on him.”

Veronica’s mouth curves up into a half-smile. “Really? Ethel does?”

She says it with a hint of disbelief that makes Betty feel inexplicably defensive. Probably because she’s always been somewhat protective of Ethel, who had endured constant teasing from the other kids at school after she’d shot up in height during second grade. Veronica had never been one of the bullies – but Veronica had also never been the one to go find Ethel curled up in a bathroom stall crying, and comfort her.

“Yeah. I mean, I dunno, he’s kind of cute.” Betty shrugs.

A sly look enters Veronica’s eyes. “You never really told me how babysitting went.” She swirls her straw around in her lime-and-cucumber mocktail, watching Betty expectantly.

Betty shifts in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. Veronica’s right; Betty had never told her about it, because then _she’d_ have to ask how the concert with Archie had gone that same night, and frankly, she didn’t want to know.

“It was fine,” she says. “He ate, like, an entire pizza and half a pan of brownies. I don’t know how he isn’t 300 pounds.”

Veronica pops a crouton into her mouth, making the simple motion of eating look effortlessly chic. Even now, after over a decade of friendship, Betty sometimes still can’t believe that she grew up right here in Riverdale, too, and not some far-flung metropolis like Madrid or Dubai. “Well, if his heart’s in his stomach, he’s hanging out with the right girl.”

“He’s not – _into_ me. We haven’t even hung out other than that, outside of school.” Betty frowns, jabbing her fork into one of the shrimp. “Anyway, do you think Cheryl’s _really_ going to bring in that Swedish cheerleading coach she’s been talking about?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Veronica seems more like herself once they’re shopping, disappearing into the endless racks of satin and silk and tulle and lace, popping back up every now and then with an outrageously expensive dress in hand that she’s one hundred percent certain is _the one_ for Betty.

“This would look incredible with your complexion.” Veronica lifts up the skirt of a velvety, hunter green wrap dress. Betty rubs the fabric between her fingers; it’s soft and luxurious, and for a split second she imagines rubbing it against her face. The thought makes her smile.

“Long sleeves are too hot for dancing. Not to mention it’s…” Betty checks the price tag, “Six hundred dollars.” She shrugs, and grazes her fingertips along a row of silky jumpsuits. “We should just show up in our sweatpants this year and see what happens. It’s not like we’re trying to impress anyone.”

Veronica gives her a small smile and turns away, studying the neckline of a silvery sheath Betty is pretty sure she’d already written off as _matronly_. “Well.”

“Or _are_ we,” Betty says teasingly, mouth curling up into a smirk. Ever since Veronica’s breakup with Nick St. Clair – a family-friend-turned-long-distance-boyfriend-in-the-city – over their last winter break, she hadn’t shown much interest in the local boys, other than an ill-advised hookup with Reggie Mantle at the Spring Fling.

But when Veronica meets her gaze, her look is anything but playful. Her hand flutters to the pearls around her neck, fingers rolling one of them around on the string. It’s been her nervous tic ever since she started wearing them in the seventh grade.

“I have something to tell you. Or – ask you, I guess,” she says.

Betty nods, frowning slightly. “Okay.”

“When we were at the concert a couple weeks ago, Archie invited me to go to the dance with him.” Veronica pauses, her eyes flicking away for a moment. “Like, as his date.”

It takes a few seconds for the words to sink in.

_Archie invited me._

_As his date._

“I didn’t say yes,” Veronica continues.  “I told him I wanted to think about it. I wanted to talk to you first.”

Betty’s chest seizes up in panic. “You told him that?”

“Not the second part. Of course not.” Veronica pauses, her fingers shifting away from her neck to pluck nervously at the strap of her purse. “I can tell him no. I – I know we always go as a group. I don’t mind.”

 _But you do mind_ , Betty thinks. _If you didn’t, you would have just told him that in the first place._

She doesn’t know what to say. It feels as though her heart has come loose from her ribcage, and tumbled all the way down into her stomach, heavy and sour.

She swallows. “Wow. Um – that’s great,” she says, holding her voice as steady as she can. “You should go together.”

It physically hurts to look into Veronica’s big brown eyes. Betty pulls her phone out of her purse and swipes it open, pretending to study a new text message with great interest.

“Are you sure?”

Betty shrugs. “Yeah. Me and Kevin can go together.”

She realizes as soon as she’s said it that no, she won’t go with Kevin, because Kevin has a boyfriend now. But that’s not the point. None of this is the point; the point is the thing that Veronica won’t say, that Betty won’t say, that neither of them has _ever_ been willing to say.

 _Is this why you’ve been bringing me pastries every morning?_ Betty wonders. _Is this why you’ve been so **nice**?_

“Okay,” Veronica says. “I guess…I guess I’ll let him know.”

Betty smiles, and wonders if it looks as brittle as it feels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neither Betty nor Veronica buys a dress.

They leave the mall a little earlier than planned. Betty mentions that her feet hurt, and Veronica insists that she didn’t have enough coffee that morning, and that’s that: Smithers is summoned. The drive back to Betty’s house is mostly quiet, and when Betty opens her door to leave, she feels a gentle hand on her wrist.

“Today was fun,” Veronica says softly. “Thanks for coming with me.”

Betty smiles again, because it’s what she does: she’s Betty, and she smiles. “Of course.” She looks towards the driver’s seat. “Thank you for the ride, Smithers.”

“My pleasure, Miss Cooper.”

“I’ll see you Monday,” she tells Veronica, and then steps out of the car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the way home she’d fought to suppress a wave of tears that threatened to cascade down her cheeks. But now, standing at the edge of her driveway, the comforting solitude of her bedroom finally in reach, Betty feels oddly numb.

She’s hardly taken a step towards her front door when a high, vaguely familiar voice stops her in her tracks. “Hi!”

Betty whips her head around, confused.

“Up here.” A head pops out of the window of Archie’s treehouse. It’s Jughead’s little sister, J.B., who must have either invited herself over, or wheedled her brother enough that he finally gave in and did it for her.

“Hi, J.B.” Betty waves, and takes another step up her walkway, but J.B. leans further out the window, the breeze ruffling the ends of her dark brown bangs.

“Do you wanna come up here? It’s so awesome.”

Betty pauses, and looks back at the driveway. Her mother’s car is gone. It’s a Saturday, so she’ll probably be at the Register until late again, making last-minute edits to Sunday’s double edition.

And while Archie is by far the last person Betty wants to see right now, the odds of him showing up to hang out with J.B. in his old treehouse are slim to none.

“Okay.”

At least four or five years have passed since she last climbed up the rickety wooden ladder that Mr. Andrews had built by hand. The final rung groans under her weight, and she pulls herself up onto the landing inelegantly, wincing as the sleeve of her light pink blouse catches against a splinter in the wood.

“Hi,” J.B. chirps. She’s settled against the wall closest to Archie’s actual house, sitting cross-legged, a backpack beside her. There’s a notebook in her lap, and colored markers spilling out of the backpack, a few caught in the grooves between the floorboards.

It _is_ an awesome treehouse, Betty thinks, taking in the features that had made it such a wonderful playhouse for Archie and his friends when they were kids: the wall painted in chalkboard paint; the squat wooden stools nestled beneath a small wooden table; the overhead light, which J.B. has switched on, bathing the room in a warm, yellow-y glow.

Her chest aches a little as she remembers the four of them – Betty, Archie, Kevin, Veronica – sitting against the four walls like Jughead’s sister is sitting now, passing pens and paper and comic books and Pokemon cards back and forth for hours, content to scribble and squabble until the sun went down and their parents came calling.

Everything was so much _simpler_ then.

Betty pulls out one of the wooden stools to sit on, and points to the notebook in J.B.’s lap. “What’s that?”

“My drawings.” J.B. flips through the last few pages, and Betty glimpses what appears to be an array of colorful animals: a pink dolphin, a green elephant, a blue horse.

“Those look really good.” Betty tries to keep her voice level; on the two or three occasions she’s run into J.B. around the neighborhood, she’s caught herself speaking to the younger girl in a high-pitched tone, the way she would her niece and nephew, though J.B. has to be at least ten or eleven years old. If she’s got anything in common with her brother, she’s probably not the kind of girl who takes condescension well. “Do you draw a lot?”

“Kind of.” J.B. uncaps a red marker and starts to doodle a series of little stars around the dolphin. “I really like it, but I don’t know if I’d want it to be my job someday. Not like how Juggie is with writing.”

 _Juggie._ Betty had figured “Jughead” was a nickname, but she didn’t know he had a nickname for his nickname. She smiles.

“Maybe you’ll illustrate his books someday.”

“That’s what _I_ always say, but he says his _novels_ are too serious for pictures.” J.B. lets out a world-weary sigh, and Betty laughs.

J.B. continues to doodle in her notebook, and Betty watches from the other side of the treehouse, the stool so low to the ground that her knees practically knock into her chin. They chatter aimlessly as the afternoon air grows cool around them, though J.B. does most of the talking, and Betty most of the listening. J.B. likes her math teacher a lot, Betty learns, and wants to take flute lessons after school.

At one point J.B. stops her drawing and looks up, squinting a little, her frown reminiscent of the one Betty is already growing accustomed to seeing on Jughead’s face most days at lunchtime. “Are you okay?” she asks.

Betty looks past J.B. and out the little treehouse window, into Archie’s bedroom window. The curtains are pulled half-shut, and she can’t tell if anyone’s inside.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I think I’m mad at my best friends.”

J.B. looks like she wants to know more, but the sound of feet on the ladder rungs beneath them draws both of their gazes to the doorway.

“Time to go. We’re getting pizza for dinner.” Jughead’s beanie pops into view, soon followed by the rest of his head. “Oh. Hey Betty.”

J.B. shoves her notebook into her backpack and sits up on her knees, drumming her hands on her thighs in excitement. Betty hides a smile behind her hand. “Can we get garlic knots?”

“I don’t know, ask Mom.”

“Can Betty come?”

A look she can’t quite place flashes over Jughead’s face. He shrugs, and meets Betty’s eyes. “You want to?”

There’s a leftover salmon filet waiting for her in the fridge, and half of an arugula salad. Her mother will probably be upset if she comes home and sees it’s been left uneaten.

“Sure,” she says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as J.B.’s feet hit the ground she takes off at a run, eager to make her case for garlic knots.

Jughead and Betty follow at a significantly slower pace. “As someone whose sister took an unfortunate interest in the French horn in ninth grade, I feel obligated to warn you that J.B. told me she wants to take flute lessons,” she says after they walk a few beats in silence.

Jughead snorts. “Thanks. At least it’s not the drums, I guess.” He slips a hand up under his beanie, scratching at the back of his head. “So…did you and Veronica get your dresses? Archie said you guys went shopping.”

A lump forms in her throat. So Archie had known about their trip to the mall. Had he also known that Veronica was going to tell her about _them_?

“No, I didn’t buy anything.” She pauses. “Were you hanging out with Archie?”

For some reason, the idea of Archie and Jughead spending time together strikes her as odd. (Maybe because, while Archie was on the football, wrestling, _and_ baseball teams, Jughead had nearly walked out of the Blue and Gold office when she’d assigned him to the athletics beat.)

“Yeah, playing some video games.” Jughead looks at her sidelong, his hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie. “I didn’t know he could _literally_ look into your bedroom. Isn’t that weird?”

Despite everything, Betty smiles slightly. Her view into Archie’s bedroom – and his into hers – had been a source of delight when they were kids, and then abruptly swung into a potential source of mortification right around the time they both entered puberty. Nowadays she mostly keeps her curtains closed, so that no one walking around the Andrews house accidentally sees her naked.

But sometimes she thinks about what might happen if she left the fabric pushed aside just a few inches to the left one night while she undresses. If Archie might catch a glimpse of her skin as he leans over to switch off his bedside lamp, and realize that he likes what he sees.

(Of course, if Veronica was going to start showing up as a regular guest in Archie’s bedroom, Betty would just as soon nail boards over her window.)

“Not really. It was kind of great when we were little. We had tin cans rigged up between our rooms for a while.”

“I always wondered if those things actually work.”

“They don’t. We’d just end up yelling at each other across the lawn until my mom told us to stop.”

Jughead grins. “I can see that. Little Betty yelling at Little Archie to do his homework, or something.”

She narrows her eyes. “Little Betty sounds like a buzzkill. I think I’m offended.”

His smile softens, eyes downcast. “Nah. I bet it was pretty cute.”

She isn’t quite sure what to say to that. But she’s grateful that he keeps his gaze towards the ground, so he doesn’t see the way she has to suppress the smile fighting its way onto her own face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Entering Jughead’s house feels like stepping into a mirror-world version of Archie’s: it’s the same house, with the same staircase and the same bay window at the front, but flipped so that everything is on the opposite side. There’s even a dog to greet them at the door, though Hotdog is a fair bit shaggier than Archie’s dog Vegas. 

“So this is the famous Betty,” says the man who must be Jughead and J.B.’s stepfather. He’s about the same height as Jughead, a little thick around the middle, with brown hair that’s graying at the temples. Cut from the same stereotypical-suburban-dad cloth as Betty’s own father, by the looks of it. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Betty feels her face grow warm. Has Jughead been talking about her? She sneaks a glance in his direction. He’s scowling at his stepdad, which could mean anything.

She puts on her very best meet-the-parents smile. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

“Did you grow up in Riverdale, Betty?” asks their mother. She looks young, with a striking resemblance to J.B. Betty wonders if Jughead takes after their dad.

Betty nods. “Just down the street. My parents were high school sweethearts at Riverdale High.” Other people’s parents always love that detail, so long as she leaves out the part where they split up in an acrimonious divorce twenty-some years later.

“No kidding. Did Jughead tell you I grew up here, too?” Their stepdad is grinning. “Maybe I know them.”

Betty shakes her head politely. Jughead hasn’t even told her his stepdad’s name, let alone the fact that he was a local.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Jughead says abruptly, and gestures towards the doorway. Betty follows him, flashing a sheepish smile at his parents as she goes.

Jughead leads her down into the basement, which is sparsely furnished with a lumpy brown couch and a television on the nubby beige carpet. “Sorry,” he says in a low voice, collapsing onto the end of the couch, one arm slung up on the back. “They’re so annoying sometimes.”

It takes everything within her not to roll her eyes as she settles onto the other end of the sofa, resting her hands in her lap. On a scale of parental behavior calibrated by Alice Cooper’s tempestuous moods, the people in the kitchen upstairs barely even register. “You should meet my mom. It’ll put some things into perspective.”

His eyes perk up a little in interest, but she doesn’t _actually_ want to talk about her mother right now, so she changes the subject. “Your stepdad seems nice. What’s his name?”

“Carl.” Jughead shrugs. “He’s okay. Carl Harrison, if you want to ask your mom about him.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Betty looks down, pulling at a loose thread on the sofa cushion with her fingertips. Jughead’s been eating lunch at her table for nearly three weeks now. They’re working on the paper together, and they’ve partnered up in English class a few times. She likes him, and she’s pretty sure it’s reciprocated – he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would tolerate the presence of someone he _didn’t_ like.

But sitting here in his half-finished basement, alone, waiting for a pizza to arrive while his family is upstairs…it feels awkward. After spending an entire evening babysitting and watching a movie together, she’d sort of just assumed that he’d extend her an invitation to do something, _anything_ , to steer them towards an actual friendship – especially after he’d made his comment about Betty ‘needing new friends.’ It’s weird that this is the first time they’ve hung out in almost a month. That his little sister was the one who invited her over in the first place. That he was hanging out with Archie today, of all people.

Maybe he doesn’t like her, after all.

She tugs absently at the little gold hoop earring looped through her earlobe, wincing when she pulls too hard. “So were you and Archie, like…talking about me and Veronica today?”

When Jughead doesn’t answer, she glances up; he looks irritated again, a mild frown creasing his forehead.

“Not really.”

Betty gives herself a mental kick in the shin. She sounds so _petty._ This isn’t Jughead’s stupid, pointless drama. It’s not drama, period – she’d told Veronica she was okay with it. She is okay with it. She _is._

So what if she and Veronica don’t spend the hours before the dance painting each other’s nails, doing each other’s makeup, making each other laugh until their stomachs hurt? So what if they don’t walk into the school gymnasium together, arms linked, eyelids glittering beneath the lights?

So what if Archie doesn’t ask her to dance…take her in his arms…realize that he’s been in love with her all along?

And then the idea hits her.

“Do you want to go to homecoming with me?” She blurts it out before she can stop herself.

Jughead’s cheeks flare up in a bright flush.

“As friends,” she clarifies quickly. “I don’t have a date, and I figure you probably don’t, either –”

“Ethel already asked me,” he says.

Oh, god.

Ethel. _Of course_ Ethel’s already asked him. And even if she hadn’t – who was Betty to try and take her friend’s crush to a dance, just so she could try to make herself feel better about her own pathetic, nonexistent love life? A hot lump of shame forms in the pit of her stomach.

“I didn’t say yes,” Jughead adds. He’s sitting up on the sofa now, his relaxed demeanor long gone. “But I don’t – I don’t think I could tell her no and then, like, show up with someone else.”

Betty can feel her own face turning red. She has to get out of this basement. Immediately. “No, it’s – I don’t know why I even asked. Forget it.”

She stands, grabbing her purse from where she’d dropped it on the floor. “Um, I just realized my mom actually had some leftovers for me at home, and she’ll be mad if I don’t eat them, so – I’m gonna go.”

“Betty…”

She stops at the foot of the stairs. “You should go to the dance with Ethel,” she says firmly. “She’s really great, and – you’ll have fun.”

He says something in return, but she can’t hear it over the sound of her own feet pounding up the steps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Betty eats two bites of cold, leftover salmon right out of the fridge, dumps the rest in the trash can, and retreats to her bedroom.

She curls up on the bed, burrowing into the colorful mountain of pillows propped up against the headboard, and places her phone on the one nearest her head, setting it on speakerphone. Kevin picks up after the third ring.

“Why are you _calling_ me? Did someone die?”

“No.” Betty pulls one of the pillows into her lap, hugging it against her chest. “I kind of want to, though.”

“What’s wrong?”

She decides to start small, and work her way up to the _actual_ point of the conversation. “I just asked Jughead Jones to go to homecoming.”

“What?” There’s a shuffling sound on the other end, and then the soft thud of a door shutting. He must be in his bedroom, too. “Why? Do you _like_ him? I thought maybe he was into you, but...”

 _Kevin thought Jughead was into her, too?_ It’s too much to process right now, especially after what’s just happened. She pushes the thought away. “No, it’s just – it was a stupid, spur-of-the-moment thing, and he rejected me anyway. And Ethel likes him and I shouldn’t have even done it in the first place. I’m a horrible person.”

“Don’t talk about my best friend like that,” Kevin says without missing a beat. “You’re a _wonderful_ person. But you’re being very, very confusing right now.”

Betty sighs. “Veronica and I went shopping today and she told me she and Archie are going to the dance together.” She pauses. “Like, _together_ together.”

Betty squeezes the pillow a little harder. Saying it out loud brings all the hurt right back to the surface, as fresh and sharp as when Veronica had turned her serious gaze towards Betty in the department store dress section, and spilled the news. The news that Betty has been dreading ever since the day two years ago when Veronica walked into Pop’s after a summer away in the Hamptons, and Archie’s mouth had dropped open at the sight of her, like he was seeing one of his oldest, best friends for the very first time.

(And it would be a lie to say that she hadn’t dreamed of having her own moment like that when she came back from L.A., a moment when Archie would be struck dumb simply looking at Betty, and seeing more than the girl next door.

The reality was sweatpants and no makeup, emerging bedraggled and jetlagged from her mother’s car after a red-eye flight, and Archie never even hesitating to jog over from his front yard and throw his arms around good old familiar Betty Cooper.)

“Oh, Betty.” Kevin sounds so genuinely sad that her eyes begin to water. “Do you want me to come over? I could bring ice cream. And board games.”

Her phone says it’s just past six. She wipes a finger under her eye and it comes away wet, smudged with black mascara. “Don’t you have plans? With Moose?”

“Yeah, but I can cancel them.”

“No, don’t,” she says, and turns her head away from the speaker for a moment so he won’t hear her sniffle. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t sound okay.”

“I’ll _be_ okay.”

“You could come with us. We’re just going to a movie.”

“I don’t really want to do anything.”

“Okay.” Kevin sighs. “I really am sorry. And we should definitely talk about this more, and – shit, okay, Moose is here, but I love you and you should call me if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

Betty ends the call, curls up into her pillows, and finally lets herself cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- OMG, I'm sorry it took me F O R E V E R to post this second chapter. If you're surprised to see that this one was from Betty's POV - well, I was too, after writing nearly 2,000 words from Jughead's POV and then getting 100% stuck. I ended up realizing that a lot of what I want to explore in this fic just isn't going to come across the right way if I limit it all to Jughead's perspective, because not only is he not part of the very long and complicated history I've imagined for the other characters, but he also has no access point into really understanding that history (at least, not this early on). So, I hope you enjoyed Betty's POV here - I'll most likely be switching back and forth between the two of them moving forward.
> 
> \- I may post what I originally wrote for the Jughead POV on tumblr at some point as sort of an extra peek into his life during this time. I'm normally not a fan of posting "outtakes" from my own fics - deleted scenes are deleted for a reason - but there's a little bit of Jughead + Archie development going on I think you guys might like.
> 
> \- I hope that it comes through in the writing, but just in case it doesn't, I want to state now that nobody is a bad guy in this story. They're just teenagers - sometimes they're sweet and funny and thoughtful, and sometimes they're selfish and overemotional and stupid. Some of them are going to do hurtful things to each other (some of them already have), but that's okay. They're all learning how to be better.
> 
> \- I know there is a not a lot of actual Bughead interaction in this chapter. Much more is coming, I promise. :)
> 
> \- I would love, love, love to know what you think of this chapter!!! Please leave a comment if you're so inclined - I'm truly appreciative of anyone who takes the time to do so, and I'm also incredibly appreciative of every single person who comes back and reads this fic after I didn't update it for three goddamn months. Love you all!


	3. three

“Do you want that?” Jughead gestures towards the last roll in the wicker basket, making eye contact with his sister across the table.

J.B. considers her dinner plate, mostly empty, then nods. “Yes.”

“Too bad.” He grabs the roll and bites into it with a grin as J.B.’s face screws up in anger.

“Jughead.” His mother sighs as she stands up and starts to gather the dishes. “Leave your sister alone.”

J.B. crosses her arms over her chest, leveling him with a stare that’s far more smug than any eleven-year-old should be able to pull off. “He’s just jealous because I’m going to a sleepover, and he has no friends.”

“J.B.,” Carl warns. “That’s not very nice.”

Jughead rolls his eyes, but refrains from informing them all that he was asked to tonight’s homecoming dance by not one but _two_ girls, both of whom he turned down, thank you very much. In retrospect, it’s –  well, it’s not something he’s proud of. And explaining the situation would invite far more probing questions from his mom and Carl than he’s willing to entertain.

After Betty’s spur-of-the-moment invitation – and swift exit from the basement, once she’d realized what she’d done – he _had_ considered backtracking on the excuse he’d given Ethel: that he had to babysit J.B. while his mom and stepdad went out of town for the weekend.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Ethel, or even that he thought he’d have a bad time being her date. Dances just…weren’t really a thing Jughead did, at least not without Toni at his side, cracking jokes about their classmates and drinking so much punch the sugar made their teeth feel fuzzy.

And changing his mind about accompanying Ethel to homecoming because of something _Betty_ had done felt…wrong, somehow, in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

He had tried to arrange for alternative plans to occupy at least an hour or two of his Saturday night: a Skype date with Toni. But he’d woken up that morning to a text that made his heart sink: _Sorry can’t make it 2nite something came up!_

So, instead of driving Carl’s station wagon across town to the Muggs’ house with a refrigerated corsage sitting in the passenger seat, or settling back against a pile of pillows on his bed for a long-overdue video chat with his supposed best friend, Jughead has his mom drop him off at Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe on the way to J.B.’s sleepover. As he’d hoped, the diner is close to empty, with most of the town’s teenage population at the dance. Jughead slides into a booth by the windows, facing the door, and flips open his laptop.

He’s barely had a chance to open the file he’s looking for when one of Pop’s colorful plastic menus drops onto the table before him.

“Good evening.” It’s Pop Tate himself, dressed as always in an old-fashioned white shirt and bowtie. The diner’s namesake has been here each time that Jughead’s stopped by, to the point that he wonders if the man just sleeps behind the counter every night. “Can I start you off with something to drink?”

“Just coffee. And a water.”

“Coming right up.” Pop hesitates, then says, “It’s Jughead, right? You’re Carl’s boy?”

It’s not unusual for a near-stranger to remember his name, but the last part – _Carl’s boy_ – makes something curdle in the pit of his stomach.

“He’s not my dad.” He double clicks on the Word icon, a little harder than necessary. “But yeah. That’s me.”

As Pop walks away, Jughead stares out the window into the parking lot, his motivation for coming here – to fine-tune the first chapter of his novel in a setting that isn’t his own bedroom – momentarily forgotten.

He hasn’t heard from his actual dad in almost four weeks – since before they’d even moved to Riverdale. F.P. Jones had never been a great, or frequent, communicator, but at least in Toledo Jughead knew he was only a twenty-minute bike ride away at any given moment.

He’d never admit it to Toni, but part of the reason he’d been so eager to Skype with her tonight was to find out if she’d seen his father lately. She took the same bus route to school that F.P. took to see his probation officer every week, and there was a certain comfort he’d felt every Thursday morning, seeing Toni approach him at his locker before homeroom, the words _saw your dad on the 32_ reliably on her lips.

Pop returns with his coffee and water, and Jughead orders a basket of onion rings, which he eats slowly over the next two hours, pausing to wipe his fingers on a growing pile of paper napkins every now and then.

He’s just settling into something of a flow when the bell over the front door jingles, followed by loud, boisterous voices; he looks up, dismayed to see nearly a dozen kids his age spilling into the diner, all dressed in formal wear. Jughead only recognizes one or two faces, but it’s probably only a matter of time before Ethel shows up and realizes he didn’t actually have to babysit tonight. With a sigh, he flips his laptop shut, tucks a ten-dollar bill beneath his half-empty coffee cup, and leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead takes the long way home, looping through Pickens Park, which despite its silence is nowhere near as eerie at night as some of the streets he used to traverse back home. They’d never lived in the “bad” part of Toledo, but growing up, there had always been a few blocks Jughead knew to avoid, especially after dark.

Riverdale, it seems, doesn’t even _have_ a “bad” part.

(“There hasn’t been a murder there since 1982,” Toni had read aloud from the town’s Wikipedia page, which she’d googled immediately after he broke the news that he was moving.

“How dull,” he’d remarked, doodling absently in the margins of his notebook, though what he’d really felt at the time was a near-painful urge to wrap her tiny frame in his arms and say, _I don’t want to go._ )

Though it’s just past ten on a Saturday night, there’s no one else on the streets, other than the occasional car whizzing by. Until Jughead finally turns onto his own block, and spots a figure hunched over on the steps leading up from the sidewalk to Betty’s front walk.

It _is_ Betty, he realizes as he draws closer, and she’s still wearing her dress from the dance. “Betty,” he calls, quickening his pace.

Her head snaps up in his direction. “Hey.”

Standing before her, he can see that she’s been crying, the wet, dark tracks of her makeup dripping down her cheeks. “Are you okay?”

Her chin trembles, but she nods. “I’m fine.”

Jughead wants to state the obvious – _you don’t **seem** fine –_ but even after the last few weeks, he still feels like they’re stuck hovering in the liminal space between acquaintances and friends, and he’s not sure how direct he can be without upsetting her even more. “Can I sit?”

Betty sniffles, but nods, scooting over to one side to make room.

He decides to start small. “Are you cold?”

She nods again – it is almost October, after all – and he slips his jacket off.

Betty looks at the jacket, and then at Jughead. “Oh, you don’t have to –”

“It’s fine. I don’t have holes in my clothes,” he teases, eyeing the cut-outs on the sides of her pink dress. The dress is somehow both demure and revealing at once: high-necked, skirt full and falling nearly to her knees, but the bare skin exposed at her sides hints at a Betty Cooper that’s a little less buttoned-up than the one she presents to the world every day. Her hair is loose and wavy around her shoulders, and despite the tears she’s clearly shed, she looks beautiful.

He can’t help but wonder how else this night might have gone, if Ethel hadn’t invited him to the dance first.

Betty tucks the jacket around her shoulders, offering him a quivery smile over the edge of its collar. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” Jughead resists the urge to rub his own arms for warmth, lest Betty insist he take the jacket back. He chooses his next words carefully. “Is there, uh, a reason you’re not going inside?”

Her gaze drops to her shoes: shiny patent leather that’s nearly the same color as her skin, and heels higher than anything he’s seen her wear before. “I’m supposed to be sleeping over at Veronica’s.” Betty runs a finger beneath one of her eyes, cringing when it comes away damp and black with mascara. “So if I go home now, my mom’s going to want to know why, and I don’t…”

She trails off, and then looks at him, almost shy. “Plus I’m a little drunk, I think.”

He’s still considering how to phrase his next question when the proverbial floodgates open.

“Veronica and Archie hooked up,” Betty blurts out, eyes brimming with a fresh wave of tears. “Over the summer. And kept it a secret. And there was this stupid after-party at Cheryl’s house, and somehow _she_ knew, and we were playing this _stupid_ game she made up, she always makes us play it, and I just felt…everyone was looking at me. I felt like such an idiot, like it was so obvious.” Her voice catches. “But they didn’t even tell me.”

“Shit.”

She makes a noise that sounds as though she’s choking on her own laugh. “Yeah.”

He thinks about putting his hand on her shoulder, or her back, but decides against it. He’s never actually touched Betty before; he’s not sure this is how he wants to start.

“Do you…want to talk about it?”

As she shakes her head, her face starts to crumple. “No.”

Jughead averts his eyes as she angles herself away from him, heels scraping against the pavement, and starts to cry in earnest. From the moment he’d met them, it _had_ been obvious that something was simmering between Archie and Veronica. But he wouldn’t have guessed that they’d actually acted upon it already, given the delicate, unspoken dance the two of them always seemed to be engaged in with Betty.

A few minutes pass, and Betty’s wet little gasps slow to a hitch in her breath, an occasional sniffle. She wipes at her face with the sleeve of his jacket, and he makes a mental note to throw it in the wash once he’s home.

Jughead clears his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Betty says softly, turning back enough that he can see her face. Even in the dim light of the streetlamps – even though the skin around them is pink and puffy – her eyes are a bright, startling shade of green. “Thanks, though.”

The air picks up with a light breeze, and this time Jughead can’t stop his body from reacting, his skin prickling with goosebumps. If possible, Betty’s frown grows even deeper. “Oh, you’re cold.” Just as he’d expected, she starts to shrug off his jacket.

“Do you want to come over?” he asks, before he can think better of it. “We can watch a movie or something. It can be an old one, if you want.”

Betty glances back at her house, her expression unreadable. “Okay,” she agrees. “I might be able to sneak back in once my mom’s asleep.”

Only the porchlight is left on at Jughead’s house, strongly suggesting his mom and Carl are already in bed, so he and Betty tiptoe inside, slipping their shoes off by the front door.

“Can I use your bathroom?” Betty whispers.

He points her towards the powder room, then pads into the kitchen, where he pours them each a glass of water before rummaging through the pantry for an unopened bag of garlic-butter croutons. Silly as it sounded, his dad had always sworn by croutons as hangover prevention – _eat a bag of these before you go to sleep, kid, and you’ll be good as new in the morning._

Betty hadn’t seemed all that drunk to him, but Jughead would be the first to admit that his scales were probably calibrated a little differently than most on that front. Better safe than sorry.

At the very least, when she emerges from the bathroom fresh-faced, Betty is so amused by the water and croutons he has waiting for her that it produces the first smile Jughead’s seen all night. “You’re totally the mom friend, aren’t you,” she teases, tearing the bag open as she follows him into the living room.

Jughead shrugs before flopping onto the sofa. The truth – that back home, he’d helped care for his inebriated father on more nights than he could count – is much worse than letting her think he’s got a secret nurturing side.

Thanks to J.B.’s ongoing Degrassi binge, most of the recommended categories on their Netflix homepage are oriented towards low-brow teen fare, and Jughead skips past them with a whiff of embarrassment. “My sister’s mostly the one who uses this,” he mumbles.

Betty laughs. “Sure she is. You’re definitely not a closet _Dawson’s Creek_ fan.”

Her mood seems to have done a complete 180 from where it was out on the sidewalk. Jughead only hums in response, allowing himself to bask in it for a moment. It’s not all that often he can take credit for _improving_ someone’s day. Especially someone like Betty.

Distracted, he breezes right past _Film Noir_ and _Classic Musicals_ without thinking about it, until Betty’s cool fingers circle around his wrist. “Oh, stop! Can we watch _Singin’ in the Rain_?”

“Sure.” He selects the movie and sets the remote onto the coffee table. As he settles back into his seat, he realizes that she’s still wearing his jacket – a fact that registers in the pit of his stomach just as much as it does in his brain. “Do you want a blanket?”

Betty shakes her head, eyes already trained on the tv as the opening credits begin. After watching _Rear Window_ together, he’d wondered if she watched all movies like that – fully enraptured, sucked into the world on the screen. Now he thinks he’s got his answer.

Jughead tugs a blanket off of the armchair beside the sofa and tucks it around his legs, leaving some extra off to the side between them in case she changes her mind. “I’ve never seen this,” he remarks.

“Well, Juggie,” Betty says, popping a crouton into her mouth, “you are in for a treat.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead wakes with an odd, tingly feeling of pressure on his legs.

It only takes him a few seconds to register that it’s because Betty has fallen asleep on them, her head resting on a throw pillow balanced on his knees. The jacket he’d been wearing last night is draped over her torso, and for a while he simply lays there, taking in the sight, his sleep-muddled mind content to watch the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathes.

Then he hears the gurgling of the coffee machine behind him, and realizes he and Betty are not alone.

Jughead props himself up on one elbow and cranes his neck around towards the kitchen, trying not to disturb the girl currently asleep on his lower legs. His mother is standing behind the kitchen island, dressed in the fuzzy blue robe she only wears on weekends for some reason, looking right back at him. She raises one eyebrow.

Cheeks flaming, Jughead flops back down onto the sofa. Truthfully, he’s not even sure how embarrassed he should feel. He’s fallen asleep with friends on the sofa before – in his mom’s living room, in Sweet Pea’s basement, and elsewhere. But never with a girl in a fancy party dress. A girl who, despite fleeing this very house with no explanation just a week ago, is now snuggled up against him, tucked beneath his favorite jacket, while his mother keeps watch from fifteen feet away.

Despite his best efforts to stay still, the movement rouses Betty from her sleep. (That, or the thick waves of tension now radiating from the kitchen.) Unlike Jughead, she comes to wakefulness quickly, sitting up straight with a little gasp as she realizes where she is.

“Oh, whoops. Um, good morning.” Betty smiles at him bashfully as she tucks her hair behind her ears. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Eight-oh-two.” Gladys’ voice rings out clearly from the kitchen. “Good morning, Betty.”

Betty exchanges a fleeting, wide-eyed look of panic with Jughead before she turns her gaze away, raising a hand to wave hesitantly at his mom. “Hi! Good morning, um, Mrs. Jones.”

 _It’s Mrs. Harrison now_ , Jughead thinks, but to his surprise, Gladys doesn’t correct her. “That’s a pretty dress you’ve got on,” she replies instead, her tone a fair bit more pleasant than it usually is this early in the day.

Betty picks up instantly on the unspoken question buried somewhere within his mother’s compliment. “Thank you! I wore it to homecoming last night, and I forgot my keys – I do it all the time, my mom gets so mad at me – and she wasn’t home from visiting my sister and her family out in Centreville yet. But Jughead walked by while I was out there waiting, and invited me to watch a movie to kill some time, which was really nice of him. I guess we fell asleep.”

Jughead’s too impressed by her smooth, on-the-spot lie to add anything other than, “Yep.”

“Well, why don’t you call your mom to let her know you’re alright, and then you’re welcome to have some breakfast with us.” Gladys pulls a few mugs from the cabinet over the sink. “I made coffee, and Jug’s stepdad ran out to pick up some donuts.”

Jughead squeezes his eyes shut. So Carl had seen them, too. The only thing that could’ve made this morning more mortifying would be J.B. trekking across town to come home early from her sleepover.

Donuts are a plus, though.

“I would love to, but I actually think she’ll feel a lot better if I just go home. She’s kind of overprotective.” Betty stands up, smoothing out the skirt of her dress. “But thank you so much for the invitation.”

“I’ll walk you.” Jughead plucks his beanie from where it lays on the floor, and grabs his jacket from where she’s left it crumpled on the sofa cushion.

He can feel his mother’s eyes on him all the way until he’s shut the front door behind them. “God, sorry she’s so awkward,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets as he follows her down the driveway.

Betty stops and turns to face him, a half-smile on her face. “It’s okay. She’s nice. But I don’t know if you really need to walk me. I’m only down the block.”

It’s amazing, Jughead thinks, how every time his face returns to its normal shade of pale around Betty, something else happens to turn it fire-engine red. “Oh. Yeah, no, you’re right.”

At least Betty looks a little flushed herself. “It’s just – my mom actually _is_ overprotective, and if she sees me coming home with you…”

“She’ll think you spent the night with a guy, and not at Veronica’s,” he finishes the thought. “Which you did, technically speaking.”

Betty snorts, and nudges him with her elbow. “Yeah, with Gene Kelly. Very scandalous.” She takes a few steps back towards the street, but hesitates at the end of the driveway. “I just realized I never asked you where you were coming from last night. I hope I didn’t just, like, give you away in there.”

“Nah. Just Pop’s.” Jughead shrugs. “The post-dance crowd started to filter in and I thought Ethel might see me and realize I wasn’t actually being forced to babysit all weekend.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Betty says, biting her lower lip as she does, “but I saw Ethel making out with Dilton Doiley behind the bleachers in the gym last night. I _think_ she might be over you.”

Jughead staggers back, clutching his hands to his heart. “Ouch.”

Betty giggles as she heads down the sidewalk. The sound sends a pleasant, fizzy feeling bubbling up inside of his chest. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See ya,” he says, and waits until she’s reached the stretch of grass outside her own house before going back indoors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

His mother sits with the Sunday paper open before her on the kitchen table, a steaming mug of coffee set at the empty seat across from hers.

Jughead hesitates, and then collapses into the chair, wrapping his hands around the warm mug. There’s no resisting caffeine this early in the morning, even if it is served with a side of parental interrogation. He takes a sip and hisses, the coffee still too hot to drink.

“Careful,” Gladys says.

He sets the mug back down, and meets her gaze. In the soft morning light, no makeup on her face, he can imagine how J.B. will look in thirty years’ time: a streak of gray through her dark hair, crows’ feet just beginning to settle in at the sides of her eyes.

“Betty seems like a nice girl.”

Jughead looks down at his placemat, picking at a loose thread hanging off the edge. “Yeah.”

She tilts her head slightly. “Why didn’t you ask her to the dance?”

He frowns. “I don’t like dances.”

“You used to go with your friends all the time.”

“That was different. That was – not as a _date._ ”

He tugs his beanie down over his ears; even the mere suggestion that to attend homecoming with Betty would be to date Betty is more than he’d wanted to admit to himself, let alone his mom.

She seems poised to ask another question, but the front door opens, announcing the arrival of Carl and his donuts. “Chilly out there,” he mutters, kicking off his sneakers by the door.

Carl places the pastry box on the kitchen island, his forehead wrinkling in confusion. “Did Betty go home?” He sounds disappointed.

Jughead jumps up from his seat, careful not to slosh his coffee, and grabs two powdered donuts off the counter, hoping at least one of them has chocolate cream inside. “Her mom’s strict. Thanks for getting breakfast,” he says, and makes a beeline for his bedroom, taking the steps two at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rest of the weekend passes uneventfully. And while Jughead gives plenty of thought to the fact that Betty Cooper had cried in front of him, come to his house, and fallen asleep on his legs, he gives very little thought to the chain of events that led her there – right up until lunchtime on Monday afternoon, at which point it becomes impossible to ignore.

The moment he sets down his cafeteria tray, Archie visibly tenses in his seat, shoulders hunched in a defensive posture, as though Jughead may leap across the table and tackle him. (A response that makes little sense, given Archie has about twenty pounds and eight years of tackle football experience over Jughead.)

“Hey man,” Jughead says, popping a bland, floppy french fry into his mouth before reaching for the salt. “You okay?”

Archie relaxes a little. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure if you were gonna, uh, sit with us today.”

Veronica appears then, the fancy bento box lunch that she brings from home most days in hand, looking every bit as anxious as Archie had – a rather unsettling vibe from a girl whose personal brand was calm, cool and collected.

As she sinks gracefully into her seat beside Archie, it strikes Jughead like a hammer to the head: these two were just caught lying to their best friend of over a decade.

Veronica’s eyes flick across the room, and Jughead follows her gaze to where Betty and Kevin are seated at another table, heads bent over a pair of Diet Cokes, deep in conversation.

He turns back quickly, a sinking feeling in his gut. Without even knowing it – with the simple act of sitting at a lunch table – he’s chosen a side.

 _High school,_ he muses, _is truly the worst._

“I suppose you’ve heard,” Veronica says with a glum note of resignation as she opens her lunch box. “We’re terrible.”

Veronica being Veronica, it’s hard to tell if she’s being ironic or not. Her partner in love crimes, though, not so much. Archie looks bewildered as he runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t even know what to do.”

 _You could travel back in time and **not** fuck each other_, Jughead thinks, but settles for taking a huge, chewy bite of his cheeseburger rather than voice his suggestion.

Leaning forward, Veronica lowers her voice. “Have you talked to Betty? Is she okay?”

“She’s right over there.” Jughead hikes his thumb over his shoulder. “Why don’t you ask her?”

“Because she won’t talk to me, Jughead,” Veronica snaps. “Do you think I haven’t tried that already?”

“Ronnie, calm down.” Archie lays a gentle hand on her shoulder, flinching when she wrenches away from his touch.

“Don’t tell me to _calm down_ , Archibald. My best friend in the world _hates_ me.” Veronica’s mouth forms a thin line as she stares down at her bento box. “You know what? I can’t do this today.”

 _Definitely not ironic, then_. The boys watch in silence as she packs up her lunch again and strides out of the cafeteria without another word.

Tasteless though it may be, Jughead continues to eat his burger, glancing now and then at Archie, who seems uninterested in anything but pushing his own food around with a fork, let alone conversation.

Jughead sighs internally. The thing is: he _likes_ Archie. Genuinely. Even despite the fact that he plays three varsity sports, loves Adam Sandler movies, and most likely shaves his chest.

Admittedly, Jughead had been skeptical when his new neighbor had invited him over to play video games a few weeks back, a feeling that had only intensified when he’d entered Archie’s bedroom and found it plastered in jam-band posters.

But Archie had also invited J.B. along for the afternoon, so she could finally climb up into the treehouse that had captured her imagination that first week in town. He’d asked Jughead questions – _thoughtful_ questions – about his life back in Toledo, his time in Riverdale, and his writing. He’d been kind.

He had, in other words, acted like someone who wanted to be friends. 

It’s hard to reconcile that goofy, guileless Archie, who adores his aging yellow Labrador and twists his entire body into a pretzel when he’s trying to win a video game shootout, with the guy who inexplicably holds two girls’ hearts in his hands, and treats them both so carelessly.

Years of observation had taught Jughead to stay far afield of the romantic entanglements that his friends found themselves caught up and flailing in. But Archie looks so miserable that Jughead knows he can’t do what he really wants – which is to walk across the room and sit with Betty and Kevin – and there’s at least thirty minutes left in the period before lunch is over. So he swallows the last mouthful of burger, braces himself, and asks, “What actually happened?”

Archie startles, as though he’d forgotten Jughead was even there. “What happened?”

Jughead nods, urging him on.

Archie twirls his plastic fork between his fingers, taking a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Well…Veronica needed a date to this fancy black tie wedding in West Chester. I thought it was weird, because we’re high schoolers, so like, why would you need a date, but I also thought it would be cool because I’ve never worn a tux before. So we went, and the bartender at the reception wasn’t checking IDs, and we both got kind of drunk –”

“Stop, stop.” Jughead waves one hand in front of Archie’s face, the other plugging his ear shut in case Archie gets any further with the story of his and Veronica’s sexcapades. “I meant after the dance on Saturday.”

“ _Oh._ Ugh, it sucked.” Archie drops the fork and rubs a hand over his face. “Cheryl Blossom has this game, Secrets and Sins? It’s basically just Never Have I Ever, I don’t know why she gave it a stupid name. So we’re at her party, and she gathers this group of like a dozen of us, and when it gets to her turn, she goes, _I’ve never had sex with a redhead._ ” He shakes his head. “And then she just _stares_ at Veronica.”

None of it sounds as dramatic as Betty and Veronica and Archie’s reactions had suggested. Jughead frowns. “That’s it?”

“Ronnie is…she’s Ronnie, you know?” Archie shrugs. “She was like, _why are you staring at me_ , and it kind of blew up from there.”

Jughead fiddles with the straw in his drink. “Why didn’t you guys just tell Betty?”

“Because we were never gonna do it again.” Archie slumps back in his chair. “We agreed, whatever we’re feeling, it’s not worth fucking up our friendships for. And now it happened anyway.”

 _Then why did you ask Veronica to the dance in the first place?_ Jughead bites his tongue on the question; he suspects the answer falls somewhere along the lines of _because I wanted to_ , and this conversation is already veering much further into gossip territory than he’s comfortable with.

“I never wanted to hurt Betty.” Archie’s voice is so soft Jughead isn’t sure he meant for Jughead to hear it.

So he pretends that he doesn’t, and asks Archie if he’s going to finish his potato chips instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the last bell rings, Jughead heads for the Blue and Gold office. As he’d hoped, Betty is already there, typing away at one of the aging desktop computers like she does almost every Monday afternoon.

She greets him with a cool nod, which he supposes is what he deserves, from her perspective, anyway.

Jughead drags a chair from a nearby desk over to sit beside her. “I just want to say, I wasn’t trying to pick a side. At lunch today,” he clarifies.

Right away, he wishes he could take it back. Maybe bringing this up at all is overkill. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed where he’d sat today, let alone cared.

Navigating all this stuff had been so much _simpler_ back home. Toni’s upset? Leave her alone for a day, then slip her a Twix at lunch – problem solved. Fangs is pissed? Invite him over, make popcorn, let him win a few rounds of Call of Duty. Conflict forgotten.

Then again, he and his friends in Toledo hadn’t spent their entire lives playing one endless game of emotional chicken.

The look Betty gives him is softer than he expects. “You can sit with whoever you want, Jughead,” she says. “Veronica and Archie didn’t do anything to you.”

 _But they hurt **you**_. He doesn’t know how to say it without revealing far more than he intends to.

“Maybe not,” he concedes. “But something tells me Archie wouldn’t make as good of a movie buddy as you.”

Her mouth curls into something resembling a smile. “That’s true. I can’t believe you never saw _Singin’ in the Rain_. It’s my favorite.”

He’d guessed as much on Saturday night, when she’d tapped her toes in rhythm with the music, and sung along softly with the lyrics under her breath. Watching her watch the movie had been just as entertaining as watching the movie itself.

“It was pretty good,” he concedes. “But noir is more my speed. You ever seen _The Big Sleep?_ ”

“Nope.” Betty shakes her head. “Guess we’ll have to put it on the list.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Veronica is absent from school the next day, and rather than sit alone, Archie joins his fellow Bulldogs at lunch, leaving Jughead free to sit with Betty and Kevin.

The sheriff’s son, he learns, is just as angry about Archie and Veronica’s summer tryst – not entirely on Betty’s behalf, and not because they’d slept together, but because they’d “lied to his face” about it. “Veronica and I went through an entire bottle of Malbec talking about that wedding,” Kevin says darkly. “And she revealed _nothing_.”

Jughead doesn’t have much to contribute to the conversation, and Betty seems uninterested in having it in the first place, so they mostly let Kevin vent. Every now and then he catches her eye across the table and makes a face, trying to goad her into a laugh as Kevin pauses for breath mid-rant, but she responds with only a coy smile, one that sends his pulse skipping all the way down to his toes.

And then, on Friday morning, Jughead reaches his locker to find Betty waiting for him, her hands behind her back, a secretive smile on her face.

He tugs his headphones down around his neck before spinning the dial on his combination lock. “Hey, Betty.”

Leaning against the locker beside his, she brings her hands forward to reveal a perfect, chocolate-frosted cupcake nestled between her palms. “Hey, birthday boy.”

Jughead’s heart skips one panicky, painful beat, landing in his chest with a thud.

He’d woken up that morning with the same mild stomachache that always plagued him on this day. It had quelled a bit when he’d entered the kitchen downstairs to find a half-empty pot of coffee and a blueberry muffin set out for him on the counter, and zero other acknowledgment that there was any special meaning to October 2. As he’d climbed the steps onto the school bus twenty minutes later, he felt as though a weight was sloughing off of his shoulders: no one at Riverdale High knew that today, Jughead Jones was turning seventeen.

Now here was Betty, ruining it all without even knowing it.

He swallows, struggling to keep his features from collapsing into a scowl. “How’d you know it’s my birthday?”

Betty’s smile fades. “I saw it written on the calendar in your kitchen this weekend. I – is that creepy? I thought I’d surprise you.”

He forces himself to take a deep breath. _Jesus Christ, Jughead._

_Stop being such a weirdo._

“No. It’s not creepy.” He takes the cupcake, and places it on the top shelf of his locker before grabbing his history textbook and shutting the door. “Thank you.”

Betty takes an uncertain step back, tucking her hands into the straps of her backpack. “You’re welcome.”

Jughead tugs at the brim of his beanie, ducking his head, unable to look her in the eye. “See you in class,” he says, brushing past her as he makes his way towards homeroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All morning the cupcake weighs on him.

 _It’s just a cupcake. A fucking cupcake. Get over the fucking cupcake, Jughead._ It’s more or less the same mantra he’d repeated to himself five years ago, when Toni had given him a handful of flowers that she’d plucked from her neighbor’s window box, give or take a few expletives.

_She’s just trying to be **nice** , Jughead._

But _nice_ was what his father had been going for, too, every year on Jughead’s birthday since he was born. A stuffed bear when he turned four. A toy truck when he turned six.

At nine, a set of watercolor paints that F.P. ruined three weeks later when he spilled a beer onto the open palette. He’d fallen asleep at the kitchen table before he could clean it up; Jughead had discovered the mess the next morning, all of the colors flooded together into a sickly brown puddle on the floor.

Ten went better – his dad stuck to cash. Same for eleven, same for twelve. And then came thirteen, and his first can of beer.

Jughead doesn’t know for sure that his thirteenth birthday had been the last straw. His mother found a new place for the three of them so quickly that in retrospect, she must have been looking for at least a month or two before it happened. But exactly one week after Gladys Jones discovered her barely-teenaged son asleep on the couch with an empty Miller Lite clutched in his lap, she had signed a lease on a two-bedroom apartment across town, and moved herself and her two children into it the very next day.

There’s no logical connection between Betty’s sweet gift and his dad’s history of constant fuck-ups. Just the overwhelming feeling in his gut that any gesture on this day – good or bad – would inevitably be followed by some crushingly awful disaster, because he was Jughead, and that was what happened on Jughead’s birthday.

Still, by the time lunch rolls around, he’s settled the roiling in his stomach enough to focus on the fact that he owes Betty an apology. He gets his chance when Kevin’s boyfriend stops by their table, pulling him away for what Jughead can only assume is a quick make out session in the supply closet down the hall.

Betty’s spent most of the period engrossed – or _pretending_ to be engrossed – in their reading for English class, _The Scarlet Letter._ (Having already read it at his old school, Jughead refuses to believe that anyone would find it legitimately entertaining.) He touches the back of her hand, swallowing hard when she looks up to meet his eyes.

“I’m sorry about before,” he says, voice low.

Betty closes her book and sighs. “No, I’m sorry. It was really intrusive of me to assume –”

“To assume I celebrate my birthday like a normal person?” He attempts a smile. “It’s okay. You were just being nice.”

Jughead hesitates. He’d spent his entire pre-calc class planning out exactly how to phrase this next part – how to be truthful without raising too many red flags about his checkered family history. But in the moment, all the words have disappeared, leaving only the feelings in their wake.

“I have this thing about birthdays. _My_ birthday, specifically,” he amends. “My dad…has some issues with alcohol. My parents used to fight a lot. On my birthday, they’d pretend like everything was fine. But then the clock would strike midnight and they’d be back to yelling again.”

Betty squeezes his hand then; he hadn’t even realized she’d taken it. He squeezes back, his pulse racing, and prays that his palms aren’t sweating.

“I guess I just have some bad associations I can’t shake,” he says. “But that’s not your fault. And I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Betty shakes her head, pulling her hand away. She looks at him for a moment, and then the corners of her mouth lift just slightly. “I take it back, anyway. It’s not a birthday cupcake. It’s a thank-you-for-letting-me-sleep-on-your-couch cupcake.”

Jughead feels his own smile curling up to match hers. “You shouldn’t have.”

“You’ll have to tell me if you like it. There are more where that came from.”

“Really?”

“Of course. You can’t make _one_ single cupcake, Juggie.”

A memory flashes past, from somewhere in the back of his mind – Betty beside him on the sofa, a bag of croutons in her lap; _you’re in for a treat, Juggie._

No one in Riverdale’s called him by his nickname yet, other than his own family. He wonders if she’d heard it from one of them, or come to it on her own.

Either way, he likes hearing it from her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP. That took longer than expected!
> 
> \- Thank you so, so very much to everyone who has left a comment or dropped me a note about this fic. I greatly appreciate your support and I'm sorry this next chapter took _months_ to complete. For whatever reason, I find myself changing gears with this story a lot as I go -- in this case, the chapter originally began with Jughead going to the dance with Ethel after all, and attending the infamous after-party at Cheryl's himself. But ultimately it didn't feel right, and I went with what actually happens in this chapter, which was my original idea for this part of the plot to begin with. 
> 
> \- That said: things are getting _deeply_ teenage, lol. Lunch table drama, amirite??
> 
> \- Yes, I'm totally aping my own fics in having Betty make him a cupcake for his birthday. It's just...so cute. I can't help it.
> 
> \- And yes, I've eaten an entire bag of croutons in the middle of the night to successfully stave off a hangover the next morning.
> 
> \- So much crying Betty in these two chapters! I promise, things are looking up for her.
> 
> \- Now is probably a good time to reiterate what I said in the end notes for the previous chapter: I don't see any of these characters as a bad guy. :)
> 
> \- Finally, a hint at next chapter: we'll be going back to Betty's POV, and Halloween!
> 
> I would love to know what you thought of this chapter, if you've got a moment to leave a comment. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!!

**Author's Note:**

> whew. notes!
> 
> \- I'm starting another WIP? even though I really shouldn't be? yes. yes I am. I wrote the first section of this for a prompt fill and wanted to dive into the circumstances of this AU more, and so here we are.
> 
> \- I think this will roughly map out to around 10 chapters, but that might change. the M rating won't really come into play until the later chapters. :)
> 
> \- this is a little more ambitious in scope than what I typically write - I'm interested in exploring not just a burgeoning romance and new friendships, but Jughead's adjustment to living in a new town, and how it changes his relationships with his family and his old friends as well. it's a lot! and these chapters are going to be quite a bit longer than what I usually write! so, all that to say, I don't have a regular update schedule for this or anything, apologies. but I do have a general plan for the story mapped out which should help keep me on track.
> 
> \- the title is from an old Death Cab for Cutie song (that really has nothing to do w/ this fic).
> 
> \- if you enjoyed this, are intrigued, want to read more, etc...please leave a comment! I thrive on comments. yay, comments.
> 
> \- come say hi on tumblr! I'm at imreallyloveleee.
> 
> \- ETA: omg, I totally forgot that Rear Window is in color and not b&w. just edited that to fix, LOL.


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